


And to Hold

by LaVieEnRose



Series: The One Where Justin Loses His Hearing [68]
Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Chronic Illness, Deaf Character, Epilepsy, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Police, Police Brutality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-08-06 07:24:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16383824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaVieEnRose/pseuds/LaVieEnRose
Summary: Brian has some shit to work through. His perspective during "Miranda," and what happens after.





	And to Hold

About thirteen hours before Justin was arrested for being sick and Deaf in a public place, we were up early making pancakes. Justin was wearing sweatpants and one of my old tank tops, casually working the whisk with his left hand while I kissed the back of his neck and wound the hair there around my finger. 

“You smell really good,” he said.

I hummed behind his ear and kissed his cheek hard enough to knock him over.

I had the radio on nice and loud, and it switched to some song I hadn't heard in years. I tugged Justin away from the counter and over to the radio and put his hand against the speaker.

“Mmm, okay,” Justin said, dancing a little, and he laughed when I pulled him into my arms and spun us around. He draped his arms loosely around my neck and smacked me on the back of the head with the spatula. I pouted, and he got up on his toes to kiss the tip of my nose.

 **You're a good dancer,** I said to him.

 **How the fuck would you know?** he said, and I laughed into his neck and then hauled him over to the couch and made him pay.

Afterwards, he crawled his way up my body and planted kisses on my mouth. His hair was falling into his eyes, and his skin was so soft it was like I shouldn't even touch it.

“I love you,” he said, and then hauled himself abruptly off the couch. “Hungry!”

I lay there and watched him pour batter onto the skillet and sing tunelessly to himself and dance around to music he couldn't hear and could not fucking goddamn believe I'd somehow gotten this.

So that's where we were just before.

**

He was fine that evening when I got home from work, too. Maybe a little quiet, but nothing out of the ordinary; hes an artist, he gets quiet sometimes. We had sex and took a shower and he made dinner and we ate on the floor and he told me about his day at the DeafBlind institute and I told him about my day with my boring clients and it was all very normal. Emily texted us asking if we wanted to go to the bar, but I was in an involved pursuit of this guy I'd seen at Nova the past two nights and Justin wanted to go to his studio. He was working on this painting he was really excited about. I hadn't seen it yet, but he'd shown me a picture of his progress. It was this wide shot, this landscape, gorgeous orange and turquoise swirled through the sky, and this cliff, and it takes a minute of looking at it before you notice the two figures standing right, right at the edge.

“It's my _Landscape with the Fall of Icarus,_ ” Justin had explained.

 **Now you just need your Auden. Is that Calvin?** I said.

 **Oh, God, Calvin couldn't even spell Auden,** he'd said.

He'd kissed me before he left and said not to be surprised if I beat him home. I watched his ass on the way out the door and then went and got dressed and bundled the hell up because it was about no degrees outside and headed to Nova for a night like any fuckin' other.

**

Sometimes, when something bad is going on with Justin and I'm not there, I get a feeling. 

At this point, I've come to terms with the fucking extent to which I fail to function when Justin and I are apart for any length of time, and I could either have been mad about that or laugh about it, and...well, it's a thing with me and Justin, so I decided to laugh about it, so keep that in mind when I'm a miserable, humorless bastard later in this little saga. I mean, no one but Justin is allowed to tease me about it—I'm not that evolved—but between the two of us we've made running jokes out of the fact that I don't know where anything in the apartment is without him there to tell me, and I never remember to pick up the dry cleaning or go to bed at a decent hour or feed myself or...listen, I can keep Justin alive through any health crisis in the book, that's my thing, but Christ I've gotten sloppy on the minutia of day to day living. That's his territory, and I just...get weird when he's not around. Probably the binge drinking out of loneliness doesn't help, but why split hairs on the issue? 

So it's possible my little psychic party trick is just an extension of that, but who could say. All I know is that sometimes—and it's not by any means every time—when Justin's away from me and something bad happens, I get a feeling in my gut that I should check in. It's how I knew to go back to the hospital after he'd had his appendix out and he was supposed to be recovering fine and something told me to go back. It's why I showed up at the PIFA quad one time when he was having a panic attack. I went to the diner for lunch once unplanned and he'd sliced his palm open and needed fourteen stitches. Just shit like that. 

So anyway, here we were at...well, if it were anyone else, I would say one of the worst nights of his life, but I don't imagine this cracked Justin's top ten, so here we were at _a night_ , and one would hope I would have had some sort of feeling that Justin was in trouble.

But no. Not a thing. 

Justin was having damn near continuous seizures, Justin was hypothermic as shit, Justin was pushed to the ground and handcuffed and yelled at and so goddamn scared, and I just kept dancing. So you have to live with that, because so do I.

**

The phone call came when I was walking from the subway station back to the apartment. A minute earlier and I would have been underground, so, you know, we really should thank our lucky stars!

It was some New York number I didn't recognize, and I was a little on edge because of what had happened with Molly two weeks before, so I picked it up right away. “Hello?”

“Is this Brian Taylor?” a man's voice said. 

How the fuck do you even answer that? “Uh, no such person. You looking for Brian Kinney?” 

“Uh...” I heard papers being shuffled around.

“I'm who you're looking for,” I said impatiently. “Who is this?”

“This is Sergeant MacArthur, from New York's 10th precinct.”

At this point I was sure it was Molly, that she'd called me her brother and they'd assumed we had the same last name. “Shit. Okay.”

“We brought a guy in a few hours ago, says he's your partner.”

I stopped walking. “Justin's there?”

“Yes sir.”

So at this point, I was thinking my little masked avenger had been out on some sort of vandalism mission, you know the sort of thing he'll get into, and I was mostly just irritated that he'd lied and told me he was going to be at his studio. Is it that fucking hard just to tell me things? What the fuck does he think I'm going to do? 

“All right,” I said. “He's Deaf, have you given him an interpreter? Does he know what's going on?”

“We're working on the interpreter.”

I sighed. “What's your address?” 

He gave it to me, and I held my arm up for a cab and maybe fumed a little bit in the backseat, but Jesus Christ, Justin. Jennifer's such a nice lady. How did she end up with these fucking hell-raisers? 

I showed up at the precinct and let them get a free grope in and let the desk jockey shove some forms at me. They were half-filled out with Justin's name and birthday, and for his emergency contact it just said “Brian,” with no number and last name, so I can't say I was a big fan of that.

“Why didn't he fill out the rest of this?” I said, as I wrote in his social security number. Also, where the fuck was he?

“He didn't know it.”

I stopped. “What the fuck are you talking about?” 

“He didn't know your address or your phone number,” he said, with a significant look at me that he thought was conveying something very different from what it was, because all the pieces were coming together for me now, and I could feel this dread uncurling in my stomach. 

Because listen. Justin blanking on his social, fine, Justin's not great with numbers, he doesn't need that one all that often, that one's plausible. But our address? No, not even he's going to lose that. And my phone number's on his fucking bracelet, so even if he couldn't remember that, all he needed to do was look at it.

So things were coming together.

I tried very hard to keep my voice steady. “What did you arrest him for?”

“Drunk and disorderly conduct. He was wandering around Central Park.”

Deep breath. Deep breath. “He doesn't drink. He has epilepsy, sometimes after he has a seizure he's—”  
_don't say violent,_ I realized right in time, “—confused and argumentative. He's not drunk.”

There were a couple more detectives now, and they were all sort of looking at me in this way that seemed kind of...nervous and guilty, and I didn't like that one fucking bit.

One officer said, “Sir, he vomited in the park—”

“He does that after seizures.”

“He was slurring his words—”

“He's _Deaf._ ” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “And after you brought him in he still couldn't answer these questions? What about...twenty minutes later, half an hour? How the fuck long has he been here?”

“Sir—”

“Is he still confused?” I said. “Is he somewhere in this goddamn station and he doesn't know what's going on?”

They looked at each other.

“He has a medical alert bracelet,” I said. “Have you asked him if he needs help? You have to have a fucking doctor here or something, right, has _anybody_ looked at him? _How long had he been here before somebody called me?”_

One officer said, “He's in a room now with...here,” she said, as another detective came up. “He's been with him.”

I turned to him. “Bring him here to me right now.”

“We have some forms we need him to—”

“No. He's not signing anything, he is confused and scared and this is not his language, he's not doing _shit_ without an interpreter and you have not provided him with one. This is a bullshit arrest and all of you know it now, so give him to me and let me take him home before I sue every single goddamn person who's ever set _foot_ in this precinct.” 

“Sir, we still need—”

“Ohhhh you motherfuckers are going to regret this.” I turned to the cop who'd come out of Justin's room. “You go back in there and you sign this, okay? Watch me.” I signed **Your husband is here,** to him, because my name sign has two handshapes and you can't ask hearing people to do two different handshapes in one sign, their heads explode. “Show it to me.”

He did a passable job signing it and I waved him off and took out my cellphone and called the fuckin' Novotny-Horvaths. 

“Get a copy of his arrest report,” Carl said. “That's the first thing you're going to need. They won't have an official report yet, but there should be notes, and they're required to let you see them.”

“I want to see the notes from his arrest,” I said to the officer behind the desk. “Now.”

Carl said, “Brian, you should probably get a lawyer down there.”

“I don't have time to get a lawyer. He's sick and I'm taking him home.” Now that he'd know I was here he'd know not to fucking sign anything, at least, and all these officers were rushing around whispering to each other and I knew they were a minute away from caving and bringing him out here. 

The guy behind the desk said, “The notes aren't on official record here.”

“I have the chief of the Pittsburgh police on the line,” I said. “Do you want to hand me the notes or not?”

He did, it turned out, and I thanked Carl and hung up so I could read through them. 

Now. Couple things stood out for me here.

First of all, Justin was 'suspect,' throughout, though nowhere could I find where he'd actually done anything besides puke in one of Manhattan's many parks, which I have since looked up and no, that's not a crime. 

Second, it mentioned that Justin was “improperly dressed for the weather.”

Third, it said he was, “held on the ground and restrained.”

So that's when it occurred to me that maybe Justin was disoriented not just because he'd a seizure, but because they'd thrown his goddamn concussion-prone skull to the ground.

And the fourth, the time on the arrest notes was 9:13.

It was almost three.

I turned to whoever the fuck was closest to me and I said, in the steadiest voice I could manage. “You hurt him and he didn't fucking do anything. He is sick and he was lost and you _hurt him,_ and if you do not bring me to him right now I will buy this precinct and turn it into a _fucking Starbucks, where is my husband?”_

Two officers looked at each other, and one nodded to the other. “He's free to go.”

“Bring me to him.”

I followed the detective down a hallway and then another one, feeling like I was choking on my goddamn heart, and then he unlocked a door and there was Justin. He was staring resolutely at the detective across the table from him, all steel and fire, but when the cop looked over at me so did Justin, and his shoulders let go and he started crying, like he knew it was safe now, and fuck, fuck, I was about to fly into pieces, because he looked _awful._ His cheek was scraped, and he was shivering so hard and all he was wearing was this thin ratty t-shirt. They couldn't have given him a fucking blanket?

I pulled him up and into me, and his skin was like ice. I covered the back of his neck with my palm, just trying to warm whatever of him I could, but I could feel how weak his legs were and I knew standing up this long had to be killing him. I got him back into a chair and got permission from him to use my voice, and then I turned to these two detectives and...maybe I queened out a little bit.

“He has been here for six fucking hours looking like _this_ and none of you motherfuckers thought you might have a bigger problem on your hands than a couple of drinks? And Jesus Fucking Christ, even if he was drunk, this is how you'd treat him, you put him in a fucking frigid cell and let him goddamn freeze, why, because he speaks a different fucking language from you? Fucking look at him! Have you looked at him? What was your goddamn fucking plan if he died in this room, forge his signature on this little fucking contract promising it's not your fault? Because fucking believe me, if he sustained _any_ kind of damage from this, if you harmed a hair on his _fucking head_ —”

Justin was tugging on me, and I signed **Hold on,** but I stopped and looked down when he said my name, because his voice sounded so fucked up, like it was coming from underwater. His eyes were completely dilated, and he was so shocky, breathing shallow and sweating through his shitty t-shirt. 

And he looked straight at me, and he just packed all of the bullshit away and he told me, fearless and honest and goddamn incredible, **I've had three seizures since I got here and I can't get warm.**

Three seizures. Three fucking seizures, after the initial one, in six hours.

 **Please can you take me to the hospital?** he said.

Do you know how much he fucking hates the hospital? You can't. It is fucking impossible to understand how much Justin hates that place, because no one in the world has as much right to hate it as he does.

“I'm taking him now,” I said to the cops, and we got the fuck out of there without signing a damn thing.

**

The hospital was awful.

I flagged down a nurse I knew and asked her to get Daphne, and everything went really fast: IV fluids to warm him up, a MRI, an EEG, boatloads of anticonvulsants to get him stable. Justin curled up on his bed into the smallest ball he could manage and couldn't fucking explain any of this to me, how the fuck this had happened, what did he need, was he okay.

 **They hurt him,** I said to Daphne, outside his room, signing because it was the only way I wouldn't get thrown out for screaming. **They're the fucking goddamn police and I know they're not saints but they're not supposed to fucking...he needed _help,_ he was sick and alone and they _hurt_ him. They took him, they fucking removed him from the goddamn street and _took him away_ and they _hurt him._**

 **Slow down,** she said. **I can't follow when you sign that fast.**

**He didn't do anything wrong! Why the fuck did they do it? His fucking crime was being disabled in public and they could have fucking killed him, why the fuck did this happen? Why the fuck did they do this to him?**

**This is the world,** she said, forcefully. **This is happening all over the fucking country and you think Justin is immune why, because he's white?**

**Because he's _mine!_**

**We are all yours, Brian! Look around at your fucking friends and look at who's getting shot by the police and get your head out of your ass! This is the _fucking_ world, and you stop yelling at a young black woman about it and you get in there and you hold his fucking hand.**

So, of course, I screamed at Justin instead.

I don't like myself either, if that helps you.

**

So life went on.

Justin got out of the hospital. I went back to work. Emily went to the studio in the morning and got Justin's wallet and phone, because he didn't want to go, and he wasn't really in any shape to go anywhere at first anyway. 

**How did it look?** I asked her.

 **Like there was a fight in there,** she said. **Paint all over the floor.**

**Jesus.**

She started to go, and I said, **Are you afraid of the police?**

She shrugged and said, **Yeah. We all are.**

Well. I wasn't.

**

Justin spent the better part of a week sleeping twenty hours a day as he got the seizures and the drugs and the cold he'd caught from that dirty fucking police station out of his system. After that, he worked through it all the way he works through everything. He went to therapy, he painted—not at his studio—and he kept his head down until he was functional again. Justin knows how to get himself through horrible shit happening to him. Lord knows he's done it enough times.

And I just...was so angry I could barely breathe. 

I know the obvious read is that I wasn't really mad at Justin, that I was mad at the situation and I was deflecting, but you have to understand that I was really, really fucking goddamn mad at Justin for everything he'd ever done in his fucking life. I was mad at him for having his studio where it was. I was mad at him for moving us to New York. I was mad at him for talking me into this life, talking me into staying, talking me into giving a shit about him, for being born when I was just some sixth-grade fucker sitting in class trying to simplify fractions, for being incandescent and flawless like a fucking diamond, for being sick, for following me out into that fucking parking garage, and for getting arrested.

The fact that none of that is his fault was very inconsequential. 

What I'm trying to tell you is that Justin and I were the worst we'd been in a very long time, in the wake of this horrible thing that happened to him, and I knew I was being a fucking asshole, that I was coming home late and yelling at him over nothing and blowing off plans and treating him like shit, and I couldn't stop.

“Jesus Christ, Brian, just get the fuck over it already,” he snapped at me one time. “It happened. It's over.”

But he still wasn't leaving the house, and I was mad at him for that. How fucking dare you tell me not to be angry when you're still scared, because what the fuck else am I supposed to be? 

**

Christmas was coming up. Derek and Daph were staying in the city this year, but Justin and I we were going home to finally tell the Pittsburgh people about the baby. 

I got on Skype with Michael to work through travel plans while Justin was taking a nap. The cold was hanging on, nothing serious, but it was messing with his sleep and he doesn't function well sleep-deprived. 

“How's he doing?” Michael asked me.

“Oh, he's great,” I said. “He went to therapy, worked through everything, now he's all nice and whole and healed.”

Michael quirked an eyebrow. “Isn't that a good thing?”

“Well, world's still the same fucked up place that it was last week, he's just okay with it now, so you tell me if anything's really improved.”

“I know that you're worried about him,” Michael said.

“It's not that I'm worried about him.”

Michael rolled his eyes. “Bullshit you're not. Can you drop the fucking act already? Something really goddamn fucking scary happened to him. He's your partner. Of course you're worried about him. The universe won't end if you admit Brian Kinney has a little soft and fuzzy inside of him, all right?” 

I rolled my eyes.

“At least it could have been worse, right?” he said. “I mean, Justin's okay.”

“Sure.”

“Come on, what?”

I sighed and leaned back in my chair. “Remember when we got arrested because you were having your Oedipal crisis over your mom and Horvath?” 

“Uh...”

“You were being a genuine fucking jackass to that cop and what did they do to us? They put us in a cell for a few hours and we went home. Nobody shoved you on the ground. Nobody fucking..denied you medical care. Jesus, you know who really got punished that night because we were in jail?'

“Who?”

I shook my head. “Never mind.”

“We had Carl show up and save our asses,” Michael said. “Who knows what would have happened if they didn't.”

“Yeah, well, I know exactly what would have happened to Justin if I hadn't shown up for him.”

“But you will,” Michael said. “You're always going to show up. So it's okay.”

I shook my head slowly. “What the fuck do you think I am? A fucking superhero?”

“Yes,” Michael said.

It's such a mild word, _worried._

**

Even if I had some sort of magical ability to always be at the right place for Justin at the right time—and I think we have proven pretty unequivocally at this point that I _did not_ —there was also the the small problem that it wasn't just Justin, which explains why I made a fucking ass out of myself at work about a week after Justin was arrested. We had these two guys from this potential new client come in—spoiler, we would not get them—to meet with Isabel, and I was in the conference room gathering up the comps from the meeting I'd just finished when Emily brought them in before theirs began. She showed them to their seats and gesture-asked them if they'd like anything to drink. She wasn't even signing, just miming, so it's not as if she was speaking her language to them. They shook their heads.

I got their attention. **Are these the guys from Bootstrap?**

**Yeah, what is it, some software thing?**

**Why isn't Isabel's assistant doing this? I thought Cynthia had you riding billing's ass today.**

**Because he's useless. Back to work for me.**

So while I was just trying to, you know, have a fucking conversation with my assistant about her work assignment for the day, one of these Bootstrap guys turned the other and said, “What is this, you think, some kind of charity program?”

“Yeah, probably a community outreach thing. You can get a tax write-off if you hire handicapped people.”

And, I don't know, my soul temporarily left my body, or whatever the fuck. 

“It's disabled,” I said, simcomming. 

They startled. “I'm sorry...?”

“It's disabled, not handicapped,” I continued. “And Emily wasn't hired for an exchange program, she was hired because she's the best assistant in this place, which is why she brought you in here and got you settled when it's not even her job, and why she figured out a way to ask you if she could get you anything that wasn't even in her language. And you...what, think that makes her a charity case, because she can't hear the bigoted shit you're spouting?”

Emily signed my name, and there are no honorifics or anything like that in ASL, so technically this could have been a nice respectful **Mr. Kinney,** but, you know, it was not. 

The guy said, “Look, we didn't mean—”

“She gets to have a job and be out in the world,” I said. “Even if it makes you uncomfortable! Fucking imagine that!”

And then Isabel walked in and said, “I'm sorry, is there a problem here?”

So, like I said. We didn't get that client. 

Isabel and Cynthia mutually decided that with all the stress I'd been under I could use the rest of the day off. How thoughtful of them. I left our little meeting in Cynthia's office after the client had been, I assumed, ass-kissed ten ways to Sunday, and went to my office to pack up my shit. Emily came in.

 **What the fuck was that?** she said.

**I've been excused for the rest of the day.**

**That's not what I'm talking about. What the fuck were you thinking yelling at that client like that?**

I stopped packing. **Watch it. I am your boss. Do not talk to me here like I'm your friend.**

**Oh, so that was you being my boss, not my friend? You could have lost me my fucking job making me look like I'm the oversensitive lamb who needs to be protected against the big bad hearing people.**

I shook my head. **You wouldn't say that if you knew what they were saying.**

**I know what they were saying, Brian, I read their fucking lips!**

I always forget not everyone is as terrible at that as Justin is.

 **And people say a lot worse all the fucking time,** she said.

**Why do people keep fucking telling me that there is other bad shit that could have happened when something fucked up happens! Is that supposed to fucking make me feel better?**

She stared me down. **I didn't come in here to comfort you, Brian.** She fingerspelled my name this time, to remove any damn doubt of what kind of dynamic was going on here.

**Yeah, clearly.**

**What the fuck is going on with you?** she said. **Something shitty happened to Justin. Stop being a dick to all of us about it. “I'm your boss.” Fuck you.**

I sighed.

 **Go home,** she said. **Get your fucking head on straight. Stop making yourself miserable over this. It happened. It's over. He's okay.**

I looked at her.

 **We're okay,** she said. 

And maybe that would have been the magic bullet that fixed everything, maybe that would have been enough, except then I got back to the apartment and expecting to have to explain to Justin what the fuck I'd just done and he wasn't there.

I flicked lights all over the apartment to call him, as if there was any chance I wouldn't have run into him, and I checked the balcony like it wasn't five degrees outside. I checked my watch. A little after two. He had therapy but that ended at eleven. 

He'd felt kind of shitty when I left that morning. That cold wasn't letting go. He hadn't had a fever but he could have started running one and when he has a fever he has seizures.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck.

He wasn't answering his phone.

I tried to remember where the fuck his therapist's office was. Uptown somewhere, eighty-something and...fuck. Sixth? Seventh? 

I kept calling him, and I was just about to give up and start calling hospitals and goddamn fucking fucking police stations when I heard the door unlock and he walked through the door casual as could be, in his scarf and his white leather jacket, and I held onto the counter so I didn't fucking collapse onto the living room floor.

“Uh, hey,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

**Where the fuck were you?**

He tugged his gloves off with his teeth, wrinkling his nose against a sneeze. “I went for a walk.” 

**A walk.**

He gave up and sneezed. “Ugh. Yeah.”

**You're sick.**

**Like barely.**

**It's fucking freezing cold outside.**

**Coat, scarf, hat, gloves. Are you going to tell me why you're home?**

**They sent me home for having an emotional outburst.**

“Ha.” When I didn't say anything, his brow furrowed. **Are you serious?**

I shrugged.

“Well, um...are you hungry?”

**Why didn't you answer your phone?**

**Did you call me?**

I was trying so, so very hard not to throttle him.

He looked at his phone **Oh, it died. I think I need the battery replaced. It keeps going from twenty to nothing in like a second.** He went to the bedroom to plug it in, and I followed him like a fucking stalker.

**That's all? Oh, it died?**

**What do you want me to do, prostrate myself? Yeah. It died.**

**God fucking damn it.**

**Okay,** he said, with that pseudo-patience that he apparently thinks is calming or some bullshit. **I get that you're scared, but you need to stop yelling at me. This is getting really old.**

 **Maybe I should go to therapy,** I sneered.

**Yeah, maybe you should.**

**Well, we can't all be so sweet and well-adjusted, can we, Sunshine? Can't all just fucking walk around like nothing bad happened. Someone has to fucking take care of shit around here.**

**I'm not letting you pick a fight with me,** he said. **And I'm not walking around like nothing bad happened. I'm walking around like...**

**Like what?**

**Like there is...I don't know, like there's life after something bad happens.**

**That's beautiful,** I said. **That's very touching. Are you writing a book?**

**Fuck you, Brian.**

I knew he'd let me pick a fight with him.

 **All I asked was for you to stop fucking yelling at me and you're turning it around on me,** he said. **And you know what? You need to stop fucking yelling. I'm sorry you made it forty-one years without realizing life isn't fair.**

Throwing that forty-one shit in my face like he's not the pettiest asshole on the planet. **You know what I've been wondering?** I asked him.

He sat down on the bed and blew his nose. **No.**

**What if I hadn't picked up the phone that night? What if I'd been in the club, or on the subway?**

**I don't know,** Justin said.

**Or what if it it happened when you were out in LA? Or when I was out of town?**

**I don't know.**

**Yeah, well, you know what? 'I don't know' is not an option. You need to fucking know.**

**Do you know?** he said. **Because if you know, you can go ahead and tell me. I'm fine with letting you get the win on this one.**

I glared at him and paced the room.

**If you were out of town you...I don't know. You'd tell Daphne and she'd come get me.**

**Daphne cannot go into a police station and start yelling at people!** he said.

He winced. **Yeah.**

**It is _just_ me, do you get that? Look at who our fucking friends are. Look at this fucking family we've...it is _just_ me. If something happens and I'm not there...what the fucking fuck? I am the only person between these people and the fucking world. When did I agree to this fucking responsibility to seven goddamn people?**

Justin counted to himself and only got to six.

 **The baby,** I said, small.

 **Right.** He pulled his legs up on the bed. **Is that was this is?**

**It's that, it's this, it's...it's me bringing home hearing people and realizing it reminds you of getting fucking assaulted, it's Molly getting hit by her boyfriend and it's fuckers talking about Emily at work and Daphne at the hospital and it's fucking...everywhere I turn I am just finding out one more fucking terrible thing after another. And it's fucked up. I am supposed to be the source of all the fucking problems in your life.**

He laughed. **What?**

**Everything bad that happens to you has always been because of me. And now...**

He rolled his eyes. **Your ego is fucking unmanageable.**

**Fuck off, Justin.**

He tried to do his signature sigh-through-his-nose thing, but he was too fucking stuffed up. 

**And you should not be out wandering around right now,** I told him.

**So what, I stay at home all the time just in case someone arrests me?**

**You're too scared to go to your fucking studio, don't act like I'm keeping you here against your will.**

**Fuck you.**

I started to leave the bedroom, and he threw an empty water bottle from his nightstand at me. **Don't fucking walk away from me.**

He should have let me go, honestly. He did not want to fucking talk to me right then. **What would you have _fucking_ done in LA, Justin?**

**I don't know.**

**That's because there _isn't a fucking answer!_** I said. **There is nothing. If I hadn't been there you would have died in that fucking police station.**

**Do you _honestly think I don't fucking know that?_**

**Then stop—**

**Stop _what?_** he yelled. **What the fuck am I fucking doing that I can stop doing? Because I will stop it, do you think at this point I care about my fucking pride or my freedom or my goddamn...tell me what I need to do to stay alive and I will fucking do it, I am scared out of my fucking mind.**

**You're not acting scared.**

**Just because I'm not going around fucking screaming at people like a goddamn _asshole_ does not mean I'm not fucking acting scared, Brian! What the fuck should I do, be a fucking dick to my partner like you are?**

**Yes.**

He stood up. **Because that's what makes sense to _you,_ but that doesn't...you are not the problem here. I am not the problem. The fucking world is the problem. And you're yelling at me like it's me.**

 **I can't fix the fucking world!** I said. **I can fix you.**

He looked himself over, slowly, then right back at me and held eye contact.

 **That's low,** I said. **Even for you, that's fucking low.**

**Brian.**

**I promised you,** I told him. **I fucking promised you.**

**What are you talking about?**

**In a goddamn fucking courthouse in fucking New England, is that ringing any bells, Sunshine?**

**You didn't promise to fucking save the world! Nobody is asking you to fix anything!**

**I have to!** I said. **I fucking have to!**

**_Why?_ **

**Because _I don't know how to exist in a world where you can't!_** I said. **Damn it! Damn it!** I kicked the foot of the bed and he flinched. **Sorry.**

He rubbed the back of his neck and looked away.

 **I don't know what the fuck to do if I don't fix things,** I said. **This isn't about me having a fucking complex, I...there is so much fucking bad out there and I don't know how to watch it hurt all of you. I don't know what else I can do for you.**

 **I just want you to tell me it wasn't my fault,** Justin said.

So there are moments where your whole life kind of shifts, where reality just...tilts, and that was one of them. 

**Hang on, hang on,** I said. **You think I think this was your fault?**

He shrugged, barely looking at me.

**Do you...Justin, do you think this was your fault?**

**I...I'm working through it with Lauren, I'm trying...**

All right, look. I know you're rolling your eyes. I know you knew Justin needed this a long time before I did, but to be fair you have the benefit of getting his perspective first on this whole epic, and also...well, you're probably a more well-adjusted fucker than I am, congratulations. But I swear to God, it had not occurred to me that Justin thought this was his fault. Sure, he apologized in the hospital, but I thought that was because he thought I was mad at him—which I wasn't, for the record, and yeah, I know what I said back there about all the ways I was mad at him, but don't pretend like you didn't see right the fuck through that, let's not waste any more time here—not because he thought he actually had anything to apologize for.

Look, I know I don't say sweetheart, but...God, _sweetheart._

I ran my hand over my mouth. **Wow, okay, I really fucked up here,** I said.

He looked at me.

 **It's okay, I've got this.** I don't think I've ever been so fucking sure of my ability to course correct a situation, so thank God for small favors, I guess. **Come here,** I said.

God help me, he hesitated. Probably I shouldn't go around fucking kicking things.

 **It's okay,** I said. **I need to hold you, come here.**

He came over to me, and I pulled him up to my neck and held him close for a long time, my arms crossed behind his back to pull him all the way in. Okay, Justin. Okay.

I let him go and tilted his chin up so he was looking right at me. **This was not your fault.**

God, there is nothing in the world as blue as those eyes.

 **You did everything you could possibly have done,** I said. **You did everything right. You tried as hard as you possibly fucking could have in a situation you never should have been in, and it was not your fault. This was _not_ your fault.**

**I could have done better.**

**No, you couldn't have.** I kissed him. **You were fucking sick as shit and you did so, so goddamn well.**

**I didn't even remember our address. I didn't tell them I was Deaf, I...**

**You,** I said forcefully, my finger against his chest. **Stayed alive in an unlivable situation until I got there. That was all you had to do. That is all you fucking ever have to do.**

 **You can't always be there to rescue me,** he said.

And what the fuck was there to say? No, I couldn't be. It wasn't possible.

There is not an answer to this shit, and if you think that's frustrating...you have no fucking idea.

I leaned my forehead against Justin's and stayed there for a long time.

And in the minuscule space between our faces I signed, **Watch me.**

**

After sex and showers and dinner, Justin asked me if I'd go to his studio with him. **Got to face it sooner or later,** he said on the way there. **God, I hope I didn't ruin that painting. It was going to be such a fucking great painting.**

 **You might not have been near it when it happened,** I said. I hadn't told him Emily said his studio looked like a fucking warzone.

We both needed a minute to collect ourselves when we got there. There was paint everywhere, and a stool knocked over, and a smear on the floor that looked an awful lot like blood, and...God, it was just so fucking easy to form the reenactment, to see Justin seizing here, alone.

I squeezed his shoulder and kissed his cheek and started cleaning up, and he stood there frozen for half a minute before he went over and checked his easel. 

I sorted through some of the canvases he had propped against a wall. **I don't think any of these got damaged,** I said, but he wasn't looking at me.

“Oh, fuck,” he said.

I came over.

“It's fucking ruined,” he said. “Look.”

God, it really was a fucking fantastic painting. He'd learned a lot from Samir last year, and it showed. The perspective was incredible, the foreshortening—he taught me that word—that made it feel like some of the clouds were close enough to touch and some of them were way off in the distance. 

And that couple standing on the edge of the cliff, at risk.

Justin touched the canvas underneath them. He must have been working on them when it happened, because there was a long streak of paint coming off of them, jagged and broken and slicing the canvas in half, and through it, a scratch, where Justin's fingernail must have caught the canvas and dragged its way down as he fell.

“Fuck,” he said. “God, it was going to be so good.”

It was a painting about standing on the edge a cliff. About this whole fucking world around you, and then there you are, small, standing on the edge of a cliff. With someone next to you.

And then the world fucking ends.

You have to look at this like an ad man for a second, all right?

 **Sunshine?** I said.

He looked up at me.

 **I don't know if I should say this,** I said. **I mean, it's probably insensitive as shit.**

**What, I ruined my masterpiece?**

**No,** I said. **Uh...you need to trust me on this, okay?**

**Okay...**

I pointed to the canvas, too afraid to touch. **This is going to make you famous.**

**Author's Note:**

> figured out how to combine part 3 with the Pittsburgh story, so that's next.


End file.
